Fields, Fens and Felonies

Description

A new work on Crime and Punishment in East Anglia (and elsewhere) during the eighteenth century. It was a time of highwaymen, footpads and desperate petty offenders, draconian penalties, extremes of wealth and poverty, corruption and rough and emerging forms of justice.

The contents include justices of the peace, policing, crimes, courts and judges as well as such matters as summary trial and disposal, jury trial, execution (and reprieve), a variety of offences including murder (and other homicides), violence and sexual offences, smuggling, poaching, property crimes, riots and disturbances.

The book also looks at the various hierarchies that existed whether social, legal, judicial, religious, military or otherwise so as to exert a variety of social controls at a time of relative lawlessness. A fascinating and statistically absorbing account of crimes, responses and penal outcomes of the era. Neither a micro-history in the context of a parish, hundred, or small town nor national account, but a more unusual criminal justice history of a major English region with its own correlation with London and the rest of England in addition to its local differences and ‘quirks’.

Part of Durston’s Crime History Series.

Review

‘Will be popular with undergraduates as an introduction to the institutions of the criminal law and a source to quarry for stories for their essays. The general public, to whom it is directed, will find it more approachable than much of the scholarly writing on the subject.’– The English Historical Review.

Author

Gregory J Durston is a barrister-at-law who has taught in Law Schools in England and Japan. He was for many years Reader in Law at Kingston University, Surrey and is the author of the Crime History Series which includes the acclaimed Whores and Highwaymen: Crime and Justice in the Eighteenth-Century Metropolis (Waterside Press, 2012) the paperback edition of which is being released at the same time.